Get rid of 'due date' and 'days left' column, group active tasks by when they're due

[Gabriel Bauman]

The "due date" and "days left" columns of the task view are a waste of space. They're full of duplicate information, they clutter up my task list, and they make things hard to look at.

Instead, group tasks vertically by when they are due.

   v _Due Today_________________________
      -Task (tag)
      -Task (tag,tag)

   > _Due This Week_____________________

   > _Off In The Nebulous Future __________

[Bertrand Rousseau (bertrand-rousseau)]

This is a nice idea. In future versions we will probably try different
presentations for the list. This could be one of them.

On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 5:24 PM, Gabriel Bauman
<email address hidden> wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> The "due date" and "days left" columns of the task view are a waste of
> space. They're full of duplicate information, they clutter up my task
> list, and they make things hard to look at.
>
> Instead, group tasks vertically by when they are due.
>
>   v _Due Today_________________________
>      -Task (tag)
>      -Task (tag,tag)
>
>   > _Due This Week_____________________
>
>   > _Off In The Nebulous Future __________
>
> ** Affects: gtg
>     Importance: Undecided
>         Status: New
>
> ** Summary changed:
>
> - Get rid of 'due date' column, group active tasks by date
> + Get rid of 'due date' and 'days left' column, group active tasks by when they're due
>
> --
> Get rid of 'due date' and 'days left' column, group active tasks by when they're due
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/340022
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Gtg
> developers, which is the registrant for gtg.
>
> Status in Getting Things Gnome!: New
>
> Bug description:
> The "due date" and "days left" columns of the task view are a waste of space. They're full of duplicate information, they clutter up my task list, and they make things hard to look at.
>
> Instead, group tasks vertically by when they are due.
>
>   v _Due Today_________________________
>      -Task (tag)
>      -Task (tag,tag)
>
>   > _Due This Week_____________________
>
>   > _Off In The Nebulous Future __________
>

--
Bertrand Rousseau
Place communale 1, 1450 Chastre, Belgium
e-mail : <email address hidden>
tel : [phone]

[Loïc Froidmont (lfroidmo)]

I really love this idea of sheduling task for a time period, like tomorow of next week.

Before using gtd, I was using Highrise (http://highrisehq.com/) and they use this system.

Here are screeshot about the UI for adding and displaying list. This can give some idea.

[mrk (cvs-src)]

It also would be great if we will able to easily move the task from 'Today' to 'Tomorrow' in this mode.

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto (khaeru)]

To be clear, I think this should only be in the 'work view'. GTG should not remove the ability to view tags in a hierarchical way.

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto (khaeru)]

Loïc—does "Next week" mean "tasks due WITHIN the next week (= 7 days)" or "tasks due in THIS calendar week" or "tasks due in the NEXT calendar week"?

The problem with using "weeks" is that people can misinterpret as "calendar week" or "7 days." If the grouping is done by number of days from today, the language should be "7 days", "14 days" etc. to be unambiguous.

[Loïc Froidmont (lfroidmo)]

In the screenshot above, "week" is used as in "calendar week".
I personaly like it that way, as used to decide at the begining of the week (=Monday) what task i have/want to do during this calendar weeks. Then, on a daily basis, I pick up task from this list to put it in the "today" list.

I think it's the way most people see "weeks", but I hadn't really think about it. It would be intersting to see if people are using a "next 7 days" system.

[RDNielsen (rdnielsen)]

Here are categories that I would find useful for a 'Today' filter on the Work View:

Overdue: Completion date prior to the current date.
Finish today: Completion date equal to the current date.
Needs effort: Start date prior to the current date and completion date in the future.
Start today: Start date equal to the current date but completion date in the future.
Could start: Tasks without a start date or without a completion date or with a completion date in the future.

There could also be a 'Tomorrow' filter that shows the same categories, but treating tomorrow as if it were the current date (and the category names listed above would say "tomorrow" instead of "today"). There could also be similar "This week" and "Next week" filters. The start date of the week should be user-configurable as a preference item.

The categories could be listed either in a separate column in the work view or in separate panes similar to the Closed Tasks pane.

The UI for selection and application of a filter could be either a dropdown box in the toolbar or a set of selections on the View menu.

[Roquentin (antonio-roquentin-deactivatedaccount)]

You can get a similar and possibly more flexible grouping of tasks using the color urgency plugin (bug #906516). Changing the task's background color + sorting tasks by due date does the trick for me, see attached screenshot. Overdue tasks are also planned.

It would be nice to be able to pick up the actual task layout (the current one or the one proposed here) depending on whether background is colored by task or by urgency.

[Little Girl (littlergirl)]

I agree that being able to toggle the display of columns in the task list would be nice to unclutter the view and make it easier to tell at a glance what's due and when. I find the "Start Date" column distracting and would like to just not see it, leaving me with just the title and the due date.

I do like the idea of having an additional option to group the tasks. An online task manager I used for work had Today, Tomorrow, and Later as the three main sections and that worked really well for me.